1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a method and a device for selecting a pathway of a target compound by combining biochemical and chemical processes together.
2. Description of the Related Art
Target molecules are either synthesized or degraded through chemical transformations, and such chemical transformations are the heart of the chemical industry. The chemical transformations require chemical transformations of a target compound through either a chemical approach or a biochemical approach. A chemical or biochemical approach may have both advantages and disadvantages. A process based on a chemical approach (i.e., a chemical process) is easy to scale up and typically exhibits a high kinetic rate. A chemical approach is amicable to greater process conditions. However, a chemical approach often may show poor efficiency for a complex molecule or reactions in multiple steps. In consideration of the number of chemical cross reactions, specificity in chemical transformations may be a challenge. Alternatively, a process based on a biochemical approach (also referred to as a biochemical process) is known to exhibit high synthetic specificity and is able to perform multiple chemical conversions in a single cell without performing an intermediate purification step. A biochemical process also has an additional advantage of being performed under mild conditions. However, the biochemical approach is not as exhaustive as the chemical process. Furthermore, optimal species or microorganisms causing chemical transformations are not easily found.
Therefore, neither a biochemical approach nor a chemical approach provides an efficient and effective strategy for constructing a pathway for transformation of a target molecule.
To design an optimized process, there is a need to consider a hybrid approach by which the biochemical and chemical processes are combined together. However, designing an optimized hybrid approach for processing chemicals is challenging, and experimental designing of such an optimized hybrid approach may not often be feasible.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and a device for selecting effective strategies for chemical and biochemical synthesis/degradation to thereby transform a start compound into a desired target compound through a hybrid approach.